Hunger Games = Battle Royale?

Apparently the plot behind the new Hunger Games movie is not so original after all. There is a little-known but reportedly very good Japanese film that was released 12 years ago with a nearly identical plot. It's called Battle Royale, and it is about the powers that be forcing children to fight to the death. Sounds mighty familiar, huh?

The film Battle Royale was released in 2000 and is based on a 1999 book about kids who are taken to a deserted island and ordered to spend the next three days killing one another. Come to think of it, that sounds very Lord of the Flies to me. That movie was released in 1963 and was based on a book published in 1954!

Of course, these plot similarities really shouldn't be surprising to any of us. The often quoted verse at Ecclesiastes 1:9 says: "That which has come to be, that is what will come to be; and that which has been done, that is what will be done; and so there is nothing new under the sun."

Nowhere is this more noticeable than in the realm of the arts. There are only so many ideas to be explored. The beauty and the art is in the way that each new artist, writer, musician, movie maker can add his or her own particular spin to it. In doing so, they can make something – if not entirely new – at least completely and uniquely their perspective. And that is what artistic expression is all about.

Perhaps all the hullabaloo surrounding the release of the Hunger Games will draw some attention to this overlooked book and movie, Battle Royale. The success of the one can feed into the success of the other. That way, everybody wins!